Monday, February 27, 2017

As early as 1936, the Reich Ministry of Aviation
demanded that the BMW Group of companies set up a second plant
for the assembly and repair of aircraft engines in addition to
the production facilities in Munich-Mosach, the reason being, to
decentralize the aircraft engine production in the event of a
war.The 'Schattenwerk'(Shadow Factory)
for BMW should be erected from 1936 to 1939 in Munich-Allach,
and here the large-series production of the 80I engine should
commence. The factory was located in the Dachauer Strasse.
The construction project, however, was delayed several
times, so that the production in Allach only began in May 1942.
Monthly, 100 BMW engines should be produced here.In March 1943 the Munich factory facilities were
badly damaged during an air attack and the production of the 80I
engine was completely moved to Allach. In 1944,
the Allach factory achieved a maximum production rate of 2,000
engines per month, an enormous output quota.

BMW 801D on display at he War Museum Duxford - UK

In
1939/1940, the workforce in Allach consisted of about 1,000
employees.At the end of 1941, the first
civilian forced laborers were deployed.In
the following years, the Bayrische Motorenwerke (BMW) became the
most important private employer in Munich with the highest
number of civilian forced laborers.By
the end of the war, the total workforce in Munich rose to over
17,000.The highest proportion of these
were foreign forced laborers, KZ-prisoners and prisoners of war.All around the Allach Factory, barrack tyoe towns
(Barackenstädte) had been created for thousands of workers.Also in other places were Dachauer KZ-prisoners at
different workplaces engaged for BMW.These
inmates came from far flung places including the sub-camps of
Blaichach, Kaufbeuren, Stephanskirchen and Trostberg, as well as
a working commando in the Süddeutsche Rohrmattenfabrik
(Bamboo-Mat-Factory) in Dachau's Rosswachenstrasse, where a part
of BMW production from Allach was outsourced‘Foreign workers at BMW in Allach’
c. 1943
All the foreigners in aircraft engine production had to be visibly
identifiable as such. The Soviet prisoners of war had the “SU” symbol on
their jackets. Concentration camp inmates could be recognized by their
striped uniforms. These photographs were most likely propaganda photos.
Munich-Allach, ca. 1943. Source: BMW Group Archiv.

'

In order to
protect the plant Allach from allied air raids, the
Reichsluftfartministerium (Reich's-Air-Ministeriun) approved on
7 September 1943 the construction of a bunker in Allach.Under the construction supervision of the
organization Todt began the shift of the underground production
of the Allacher manufacture and thus the employment of
KZ-prisoners at the bunker construction site.

The first prisoners were already deployed in Allach in
1942, and they returned to the Stammlager Dachau in the evening.
In March 1943, the prisoners had to erect the sub-camp in
the immediate vicinity of the plant. In part,
these prisoners were accommodated in existing horse stables.
The campground which comprised of a total of 30
buildings was surrounded by an electrically charged fence and
watchtowers.There was a utility-building
with kitchen and laundry facilities, an administration building,
accommodation barracks and an assembly ground.In addition, SS accommodation and a camp chancery were
built.In the next two years, one of the
largest sub-camp complexes of the KZ-Dachau was built, which
apart from the sub-camp Allach BMW, the camps Karlsfeld OT and
Rotschweigen were subordinated to Dachau.

The
sub-camp BMW Allach was a pure men's camp. It was initially
planned for 3,000 to 4,000 prisoners. In July 1944 several
barracks were separated and the sub-camp Karlsfeld OT was
set up for Jewish prisoners. On 29 November 1944 there were
4,743 prisoners in Allach. However, the demand for labor at
BMW rose further, and the occupancy up to February 1945 had
increased to about 10,000 prisoners. On 26 April 1945 8,970
prisoners were still registered, including Russians, French,
Poles, Yugoslavs, Italians and Germans. At the same time,
the sub-camp complex Allach changed in April 1945 to a
transit camp for evacuated detainees from other Dachauer
sub-camps such as Burgau and Türkheim or from the more
northern concentration camps, which could not take up the
then overcrowded Stammlager Dachau. At times up to 22,000
prisoners were in the sub-camp Allach BMW.

Inmates waving a home-made American flag greet U.S. Seventh Army
troops upon their arrival at the Allach concentration camp on
April 30, 1945. Photo credit: National Archives, courtesy of
USHMM Photo Archives

The first KZ-prisoners were mainly trained with the view to be
proficient in the construction of the sub-camp and the skills
required in the factory as metal cutters, turners and locksmiths.
About half of the detainees worked in the factory, the rest were
working on the construction sites for the plant and from September
1943 on the bunker projects. One of the heavy assignments was
named after the executing construction company 'Commando
Dylerhoff'. Here, the prisoners were driven to work by beatings,
because [in some cases,sic] they fell into the mortar containers
which was thereby spilled [probably deliberately,sic].
There was also the fact that the breaking of a masonry drill on
the construction site was punished as a sabotage with the threat
of the death penalty. For the production, the prisoners worked in
two 11.5 hours shifts and were supervised by civilian masters
(Meister, a person with a degree in his field of expertise). Many
of the civilians were humanly inclined towards the prisoners;
others did not hesitate to make reports when they produced too
many reject parts or virtual scrap material, this resulted, that
the prisoners were subjected to severe penalties for such offenses
at the workplace and later on in the camp.[There
were several "executions" due to sabotage, escape attempts
or theft of food.The Central Office
of the Landesjustizverwaltungen lists 50 murders.sic]The arrival
and the living conditions In the camp Allach-BMW the former
prisoner Karl A. Gross described: 'We marched through the gates
9'hats off!') What we saw in front of us was a desolate
impression To see the huts, which, on closer
inspection, turned out to be horse stables, without windows, but
with gaps like openings underneath the roof, this was shuddering
to us, Dachau was a concentration camp, a clean city against
this collection of stables' .(This part
of the sub-camp had initially 22 wooden barracks, which
had been converted from former horse stables.On average, 3,500 to 5,000 prisoners were in the
camp.The barracks were not
equipped with locks, the prisoners were sleeping on straw
bags as mattresses in three-tier beds. I lived in one of
these barracks after the war, while employed by the US
Army and can not criticize the living condition nor the
hygienic facilities of this camp. HKS,sic.)

The deputy kitchen Kapo Erich Kunter described the situation
in the prisoner's kitchen in 1947. A large part of the food had
already been taken by members of the SS. The food conditions in the sub-camp
Allach deteriorated above all towards the end of the war.Last existing buildings of th camp Allach,
Granatstraße 8 and 10.

Camp commander of the sub-camp cpmlexes Allach and at the same
time camp leader of the camp Allach-BMW was SS Obersturmführer
Josef Jarolin, his deputy SS-Hauptscharführer Sebastian Eberl.
A surviving prisoner estimated the overall strength of the SS
men in Allach to be on an average of 800. Among them were SS
men from Hungary, Romania and Croatia. Above all, camp leader
Jarolin was in the camp the most feared because of his
cruelty. In Allach, for example, there were beatings as
punishment, severe arrest periods and during wintry
conditions, in which the prisoners were poured over with
water. More than 40 prisoners were hanged. The Crematoria-Capo
of the KZ-Dachau Emil Nahl reminded us that during the
Christmas season of 1943 he was commissioned to prepare six
Russian prisoners at Allach to hang. In the summer of 1943
further prisoners were hanged in Allach; they had been picked
up in an escape attempt. In other cases alleged sabotage was
the reason for an execution by the rope.
View YouTube: Landsberg's hangings, a total of 288 were hanged
by American Occupation Forces, sic.

A number of
Functionary Prisoners from camp Allach-BMW are well-known by
name, such as the assistant clerk at Stefan Lason, the Revier
Kapo (Hospital) Michael Rauch. Kapo of the clothing supp;y room
and later block leader of B 3 Gustav Adolf Carl.The Red Spain fighter , Ferdinand Westerbarkey, who had
been a warehouse clerk and the German Karl Wagner who was since
April 1943 Camp Elder.When Wagner
refused to beat a Soviet prisoner on the orders of the
commandant Jarolins in July, he was dismissed and transferred
after five days to the bunker at the arrest facilities in
Dachau.Incarcerated for six weeks in
the bunker, he was released after the customary beatings were
carried out.The French doctor, Henri
Laffitte, was especially popular among the prisoners.Information as to the total number of
deaths from the sub-camp Allach-BMW are still very
inaccurate to this day. This resulted not least from the
fact that the dead were transferred to Dachau and included
in the death statistics there. This makes the numbers for
the sub-camp distorted and much too low. In 1947/48, corpses
were exhumed on the site of the former camp.

On 26 April
1945, 9,000 prisoners left the Stammlager Dachau.The evacuation prisoners marched also through the
sub-camp Allach.On the same day all
German and Russian prisoners from Allach were put on the same
march.They followed the route along the
Würm River via Pasing and Gauting to Leutstetten.On the 27th of April, they came upon a marching column
from the KZ-Dachau.Until the liberation
in Waakirchen on 1 May 1945, the prisoners marched through
Starnberg, Wollfahrthausen and towards Bad Tölz.
In camp Allach, there were still about 10,000
prisoners left, who were liberated by American troops on the
30th of April 1945.After the liberation, survivors founded the Comité
de Liberatiuon d'Francais d 'Allach, which essentially published
publications about this camp.

According to
former prisoners, Jarolin had often struck prisoners in
the administration building of the Dachau concentration camp to
unconsciousness. According to the
prisoners, he was also present on July 1, 1942, when twelve
prisoners were punished while tied to stakes. Jarolin had
ordered the hanging of the prisoners as their shoes touched the
ground(Which in fact is a strangulation method of hanging,sic) In a handwritten
affidavit, which had arisen before the beginning of the process,
Jarolin stated that between May and December 1941 150 prisoners
had been imprisoned and beaten with an ox-whip. Between
July and September he had been involved in the execution of
about 700 Soviet prisoners of war; He had given commands to
the execution commando and shot prisoners in 30 to 40 cases. In April 1942,
Jarolin was reportedly involved in the selection of prisoners,
at which the concentration camp doctor Sigmund Rascher conducted
human experiments in Dachau. After that, he
had also been present at Rascher's experiments. Jarolin also
stated that he had been present in Dachau from December 1942,
and also after his transfered to Allach, oversaw there the
execution of the beating and the hanging.

Jarolin was condemned on 13 December 1945 as well as 35
other defendants during the Dachau main process by an American
military court because of war crimes sentenced to death by the
rope.In the case of jury trials, jailing
and kicking of detainees, the killing of three detainees were
considered as individual crimes by Jarolin. The verdict was confirmed by the Commander-in-Chief of
the American Armed Forces in Europe on April 5, 1946, who had a
corresponding recommendation by a "Review Board" of the army. Jarolin was hanged on May 28, 1946, in Landsberg's
War Crimes Camp.

In 1976, the
prosecutor's office in Munich tried his deputy Sebatian Eberl
for killing offenses in the Allach-BMW camp.The procedure was discontinued in 1980 due to the poor
state of health of Sebastian Eberl.Emil Mahl, who was involved in Allach's hangs, was
condemned to death in the first Dachauer trial.After several court document checks, he was pardoned to
ten years of imprisonment.

After
the war, the wooden barracks of the camp Allach-BMW were
demolished except for one. In other parts of the camp, refugees
and prisoners of war were living. Between 1950 and 1952 the
settlement of Ludwigsfeld was built there for Displaced Persons.
On 2 May 1997, a memorial plaque dedicated to the victims of the
sub-camps Allach and Karlsfeld was erected at the building of
the former cafeteria in the Granatstrasse on Initiative of the
Cpmite International de Dachau. Together with the MTU Group, the
successor company of the Allach plant, and the BMW Group started
a few years ago to research the role they played under the rule
of National Socialism. Both companies allow historians to access
their archives.

BMW headquarters in MunichAPPENDIX
luxury automobile maker BMW is celebrating its centennial. The
small engine manufacturer rose to a global player with the Nazi era
playing a key role in the company's development.
German luxury automobile maker BMW is celebrating its
centennial. The small engine manufacturer rose to a global player with
the Nazi era playing a key role in the company's development.

BMW - three letters that are instantly recognizable anywhere in the world.The BMW Group is one of the world's most successful automobile
manufacturers, a leader among global premium brands. No doubt, the firm
founded on March 7, 1916 is a huge success story. For that matter, it's a
typical German success story, that is a mix of gloomy chapters and
great milestones.

A lot can be learned about BMW when looking at
the annual company books, which - among other accomplishments - list
the first commercially successful motorcycle, the BMW R 32, but also
mention the fact that beginning in December 1939, prisoners of war,
detainees, forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners were put to
work making airplane engines at various production sites.Today,
BMW no longer keeps under wraps the fact that the firm resorted to
forced labor during the Nazi era. "Every tour through our museum and the
production site in Munich's Allach district mentions that," says BWM
spokesman Stefan Behr. But using forced labor wasn't limited to BMW, he
adds: "It was a social phenomenon found all over the entire country."
Supplying forced labor
Quite a few German companies in fact used forced labor during the Nazi
era, including the country's automobile manufacturers: rival Daimler
employed about 40,000 forced laborers, Volkswagen had about 12,000, and
at BMW, two out of three of the firm's 56,000 employees were forced
laborers and concentration camp prisoners at the time. As the war
dragged on, they were "increasingly discriminated against and
systematically exploited," according to a 2008 doctoral thesis in the
company's archives
CultureGerman luxury automobile maker BMW is celebrating its
centennial. The small engine manufacturer rose to a global player with
the Nazi era playing a key role in the company's development.

BMW - three letters that are instantly recognizable anywhere in the world.The BMW Group is one of the world's most successful automobile
manufacturers, a leader among global premium brands. No doubt, the firm
founded on March 7, 1916 is a huge success story. For that matter, it's a
typical German success story, that is a mix of gloomy chapters and
great milestones.

A lot can be learned about BMW when looking at
the annual company books, which - among other accomplishments - list
the first commercially successful motorcycle, the BMW R 32, but also
mention the fact that beginning in December 1939, prisoners of war,
detainees, forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners were put to
work making airplane engines at various production sites.Today,
BMW no longer keeps under wraps the fact that the firm resorted to
forced labor during the Nazi era. "Every tour through our museum and the
production site in Munich's Allach district mentions that," says BWM
spokesman Stefan Behr. But using forced labor wasn't limited to BMW, he
adds: "It was a social phenomenon found all over the entire country."
Supplying forced labor
Quite a few German companies in fact used forced labor during the Nazi
era, including the country's automobile manufacturers: rival Daimler
employed about 40,000 forced laborers, Volkswagen had about 12,000, and
at BMW, two out of three of the firm's 56,000 employees were forced
laborers and concentration camp prisoners at the time. As the war
dragged on, they were "increasingly discriminated against and
systematically exploited," according to a 2008 doctoral thesis in the
company's archives.Other industries also massively relied on forced labor: Krupp, Bosch,
Siemens and the IG Farben chemical industry conglomerate - known today
as BASF, Bayer and Hoechst. IG Farben - the firm that produced the
Zyklon B cyanide gas that killed millions of Jews at the death camps - [still the German version of concentration camps was: 'Arbeitslager und Vernichtungslager (Working CAmps and Extermination Camps), Forced Labour is a misnomer and were recruited in occopied countries by the German Labor Exchange and voluntary choose to work in Germany sic]
actually even ran a factory within the Auschwitz concentration and death
camp complex.

Doing business with the Nazis
Even
today, many firms argue that, with their skilled workers sent off to
war, they were required to fulfill their production quotas using
whatever labor they could find. Businesses were told to resort to using
forced labor, Behr says.The Nazi regime banned the production
of automobiles and severely limited the production of motorcycles, BMW
spokesman Behr says. This is not quite correct: The BMW R75 is a World War II-era motorcycle and sidecar combination was produced for the German Armed Foorces,In the 1930s BMW were producing a number of popular and highly
effective motorcycles. In 1938 development of the R75 actually started in
response to a request from the German Army. sic].
.Instead, BMW was forced to produce great numbers of
airplane engines - a branch the company had actually moved away from -
while relying on concentration camp prisoners. While this is no
justification, Behr says that today, "it's difficult to understand the
extent of entrepreneurial liberties back then based on nothing but a few
documents." However, he concedes, BMW also made money in the deal.
German historian Lutz Budrass says that many feel the IG Farben factory
at Auschwitz-Monowitz was the absolute low point in industrial
developments during WWII. But BMW and airplane manufacturer Heinkel, to
name just a few, weren't much better, he explains: "The difference is
that their factories were in Germany and not in occupied
Poland."Beginning in February 1943, BMW and Heinkel became the first
companies
to profit from slave labor from the subcamps established alongside
larger concentration camps.

Post-war fresh start
After 1945, the allies
investigated the role of German industry during the war, but according
to Budrass, who is also an expert on the aviation industry during the
Nazi era, "that didn't include today's leading German enterprises."
Major captains of industry like Bohlen and Halbach's Alfried Krupp,
Friedrich Flick and various IG Farben managers stood accused at the
Nuremberg Trials - but comperatively smaller players like Daimler, VW,
Lufthansa and BMW and their managers did not. However, there were still
some stiff consequences:
"After WWII, production was forbidden;
some of our factories were disassembled and machines given away as
official war reparations," BMW spokesman Behr says. "BMW still exists
today despite this era - not because of it."
But there was also
growth in unexpected places. Enterprises like BMW profited from their
accumulated technical expertise, historian Budrass argues. US forces in
Bavaria found that only BMW had the necessary expertise to service its
huge motor pool. Budrass says that therefore another question arises:
"How much did developments in the 1950s depend on the Nazi era?" he
wonders.[None whatsoever, as the Karlsfeld factory producing the R75 motorcycles with sidecars,was given as war price to Jugoslaviasic]

Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front on BMW Notorcycles, Model R75

The plot thickened by 1959, when Herbert Quandt saved
BMW from a takeover by rival Daimler and helped it grow further out of
the ruins of World War II. But his father Günther Quandt, a well-known
German industrialist, had kept close personal and business ties to the
Nazi regime. His ex-wife Magda married Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph
Goebbels while Günther Quandt himself made a fortune arming the German
Wehrmacht, manufacturing weapons and batteries while acquiring assets
from Jewish company owners.Quandt and BMW may have been
separate firms during the war, but in 1959 funds amassed in the Nazi era
by his father allowed Herbert Quandt to save BMW. [The recovery of German Industrial Enterprises was only possible with
the chaange of the monetary system by intruducing the DM (Deutsche
Mark) in June 1948 by an American Pfc,by the name of Tannenberg, yes you
guessed it, he was a German Jew,The existung Reichsmark had no value,sic] Better late than never
Today, the company archives
are open to researchers and journalists, which has resulted in two
academic dissertations being written about BMW's dealings between 1933
and 1945. Other German brands like Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank, Krupp,
Bertelsmann, Bosch, Dr Oetker and the Quandt family have also
investigated this dark period in their histories.
"Many firms
have realized that understanding one's past has a positive effect,"
Budrass says. "It's a sign of honesty," he says. However, it is also a
source of great marketing: in publications celebrating its centennial,
BMW points to its role as founding member of Remembrance, Responsibility
and Future (EVZ), a foundation established for the compensation of
former forced laborers. It fails to mention, however, just how involved
the company was in using forced labor.
On September 30, 1939,
BMW purchased an aircraft engine manufacturer based in the Spandau
district of Berlin called Brandenburgische Motorenwerke. Today, the
company produces motorcycles for worldwide distribution there. However,
there is no mention anywhere that the premises subsequently housed the
largest camp for forced and foreign laborers in the region. [Not on the premises, but at Munich -Allach sub-camp as puvlished above, herbstolpmann@gmail.com,sic]

About Me

Dachau-Ost, (now living in Auckland), Bavaria=Bayern (Manukau City), New Zealand

It is well known that Dachau is located just North of Munich, Germany. I lived in the old SS-Hospital Haus.No 52B for 10 years. I did publish my German ID but had to delete certain entries due to Identity Theft. I am now living in New Zealand since 1956 my country of adoption, still married at the age of 85 with three great grand children,have three sons and a number of relations in America, Australia, Switzerland and Germany. Otherwise of reasonable heath, although slow in my movements. My hobbies: Travelling to other countries meeting and trying to understand other cultures, supporting a school of street kids in India for the last 25 years.